NOV 5 2023 | The Seven Trumpets of Revelation S1E4 | The Little Scroll

Sea Change Church · The Seven Trumpets of Revelation S1E4 · "The Little Scroll" · November 5, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Revelation 10, one through 11. Then I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud with a rainbow above his head. His face was like the sun and his legs were like fiery pillars. He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion when he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. And when the seven thunder spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven say, seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.

Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raise raises right hand to heaven. And he swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it. And he said, there will be no more delay. But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished just as announced to his servants, the prophets. Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more.

Go take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and I asked him to gimme the little scroll. He said to me, take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it'll be as sweet as honey. I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it.

It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then I was told, you must prophesy again about many people's nations, languages and kings. The word of the Lord. Revelations 10, if you have your bibles open up to the whole chapter, revelations 10. We're in Revelation 10, the entire thing today.

And uh, we've got a pause. We have a strategic pause in the action in Revelation, and that seems to happen a fair amount. If you ever spoke to a British student or someone from the Commonwealth, if they're in college after college, they have a thing called the gap year. And if you've heard the gap year, the gap year is a a year when you've been doing school for your whole life and it's a time to take a break, take a pause, uh, go travel the world, go with the Australians, and call and walk about, and then come back and get back into the career of your choice. And, uh, people see that pause as a strategic pause.

And so here in the scripture again, we see this strategic pause. Now we've seen many pauses in the action and revelation. The last one was when we were reading about the seals. And remember, after the seals were broken, after the last seal was broken, there was a silence in heaven. So you had this pause before the trumpet started blowing.

Now the sixth trumpet is getting ready to blow, and before the seventh trumpet actually blows. Uh, the sixth trumpet is already blown. Last week, sorry. And then before the seventh trumpet is blown, there's this pause and we see something else happening. A couple things happen. One, we have this mighty angel who shows up on the earth.

And then next week you're gonna hear about these two witnesses. And then we, then we finally get to the seventh trumpet, which is mentioned in this passage. Felt like the Lord wanted me to say first of all, because I'm always trying to seek what does God want me to say to you as a congregation? And uh, I shared this word with somebody this week and they felt really encouraged by it. So I think it's for many of us, some of you are in a pause and God has a pause in your life strategically for a reason. You feel like you're unfruitful, you finished one thing and you haven't gone on to the next. And as Christians, we're not very good at experiencing the gap year with God to kind of settle down, to kind of be without that purpose we need to have because we can't feel like we're really in Christ unless we have a purpose, right? And we're just on it.

And so the first thing, just quickly, I felt like the Lord would say to you that if there's been a pause, there's something's not going. Your timing is not working the way that you think it should work, that God never has a pause without a reason. And so we see a reason here. So that's just the first word I want to give you.

And if any of you feel that you're waiting for that next door to open, don't miss the pause. Don't miss the pause. Live into the pause. God knows what he's doing and he's sovereign as we'll. See here in just a second, we have a pause before the seventh trumpet. There's key word today. Key word in the Greek is mysterion, but it's mystery is the key word.

And this verse is full of mystery. Mystery is an interesting word. We're gonna drop into that word, uh, mysterion here in a second. Couple some questions that come up in this passage, right? Who's this angel? This angel with pillars of fire for legs and rainbow crowns and enclosed with, you know, um, with, with the clouds. And who's the angel and what do the seventh thunders say? Right?

So he speak, he roars like a lion, right? And then all of a sudden the seventh thunders speak and you're like, oh, what did the, if the seventh, I want to hear what the seventh say. And then, uh, the angel says, nah, don't write that one down. Can't write that down. Can't tell you. You're not gonna know what that means. Like then why speak another question. What's in the scroll?

What does the scroll say? We saw a big scroll before. Remember it had seven seals and we saw this scroll, and now there's a little scroll and there's some debate. Is this the same scroll as before or is this a smaller scroll that says the same thing? There's all of these questions. The word today is mystery. Mysterion, really fun word to say.

And we're gonna talk about the mystery and the mystery of God and how to be comfortable in God's mystery. How to be comfortable in the gray zones. I, I believe the, uh, ability to be comfortable in the mystery and in the pauses of God. Uh, God in our lives separates mature believers from believers that are easily shipwrecked in their faith when things don't go according to their timing.

And so we see a pause and we see a bunch of mystery. Let's jump right into it before we get to the three main points. Let's just talk about an angel for a second. Let's get to the first mystery verse one. Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, and he was robed in a cloud with a rainbow above his head, and his face was like the sun and his legs were like fiery pillars. Uh, until about 72 hours ago, I've always thought that this was Jesus. Uh, there's a lot of debate. There's actually five plausible thoughts of who it is.

There's only two that really matter, I think that matter the most, at least. Is it an angel or is it Jesus? You can look up what the other translations might be, but I think most scholars would say it was one of the two. It's either an angel or it's Jesus. And I've always thought until about 72 hours ago that it was Jesus. And there's a few reasons for that. Um, talk about the meaning of angel, how it can be used in the Old Testament, but when the argument for Jesus is this, uh, robed in the clouds. So in for, uh, first Thessalonians four 18, we meet Jesus in the clouds, right?

We see Jesus on clouds. And so there's that imagery of, of the cloud, although most Ian pictures that you will see of angels will be them on clouds. But we see Jesus. And so that's just one little way that it points to that next thing. He has a rainbow over his head. What's the rainbow? It's a sign of God's covenant. Whenever you see a rainbow, it means God's judgment, but it also means God. Covenant.

One of the things that Pastor Jim loves to say, and I love it, is two things can be true at once. I love that means you can have God of judgment. God has to be a God of judgment, or he is not just, but God is also a God of promise. And the rainbow has a promise of things as well, and a and a covenant. So that's another reason that points to it might be Jesus.

His face was like the sun. And we see that in scripture, especially in the Old Testament. When Moses would look upon God, his face would be like the sun. You could not look upon his face. And that imagery, you see that in the amount of transfiguration, this, this, his angel is so bright that it's, you know, that seems like Jesus to me.

And then the final one is his legs were like fiery pillars. Well, where did we see pillars of fire? Well, we saw it with the Holy Spirit when it came in the Book of Acts and, and rested upon their shoulders. And so there's all this imagery that points to it. And so I've always just thought that was Jesus, even though it says angel.

And what makes you think that? Well, if you were to look at the two different words for Angel, the Hebrew word is, I'm not gonna do the pronunciation right, but it's actually like more like Mela. And that word actually means if I believe that's in the notes. If if not, I apologize. I do do some work on Saturdays in the Hebrew Bible actually, it's not.

Angel translates as a messenger and can refer to both humans and divine messengers. So when you look in the Old Testament, they use that word angel. It can mean an angel like the Archangel Michael, but in the Old Testament different from the New Testament. We'll see in just a moment. It can also be a divine meaning. Well, Adam proved that to me. Okay, well let's look at Exodus chapter three. Uh, burning bush. There's an angel.

It mentions there's an angel in the burning bush in Exodus chapter three. And when you go to Exodus chapter three, you can pull that Hebrews verse down, we're not there yet. Um, as you, um, uh, look at the angel in, in, uh, Exodus chapter three, you're gonna see that that angel is speaking, or in the bush he sees an angel in the burning bush.

But then when Moses goes up to the burning bush, it says the Lord God speaks to him. So all of a sudden there's a, there's a, uh, a, you know, a mixing, a blending together, a poltus where they use an angel and then in the fire it's God, which is it. And so there is a thought that may, that's God in the burning bush. And so God ends, ends up having this conversation.

So is it possible that an angel showed up and then the angel bounces out real quick and then God shows up and takes his place? That's definitely a possibility. But you're gonna see that the, the ACH word is a lot different than the an Gallos word. And I'm probably butchering that as well and I'm really bad at my Greek translations. Um, but if you look in the, uh, new Testament, it's not true for the Greek and the New Testament.

Angelos or Engels means only messenger in the new Bible. In the New Testament, it means only messenger. That's there's a, there's one meaning it doesn't have that divine meaning. And I think the greatest argument that this is an angel probably comes from the book of Hebrews. In the book of Hebrews, you're gonna see that that it goes out of its way to differentiate between an angel and who Jesus is.

There is a whole bunch in the book of Hebrews that says, angels do this. Jesus is this and angels are not Jesus. And Jesus is not angels. And there's no use of that divine language like you see in the Old Testament. So you're gonna see the first one in Hebrews one, four through five when it talks about angels. Lemme just read that to you quickly. It says, so he became much superior to the angels.

That's Jesus as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs for to which of the angel did God ever say, you are my son today I've become your father. Or again, I will be your father and he will be my son. So that's the first analogy where Hebrews kind of shows that differentiation. The next one is in Hebrews six 13 because a little bit further in this passage, this angel does something right.

This angel swears he doesn't swear in the way that you see swearing on, you know, YouTube or something like that. He swears that something will be accomplished and he swears by heaven, he swears up by heaven, by something other than himself. If you look in the, in the scriptures, especially in Hebrews, when it speaks about God swearing, he doesn't swear to something else, he swears upon himself.

So this angel does not swear upon himself, he swears upon something else. So if you were to look at Hebrews six 13 when you can write these down because these are not in your notes, when God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself. So really powerful. So first of all, we're believing that this is Jesus.

We're gonna get into a couple points here in this scripture today as we look into it. And there's three main points today as we just tear this scripture apart and consume it. Like uh, John is told to consume the scripture at the end of the passage. First one is this, God holds unchallenged dominion over creation. Lemme say that again. God holds unchallenged dominion overall of creation. God is in charge of creation.

If he wants an ice age to start tomorrow, an ice age will start tomorrow. If he wants to burn the earth up tomorrow, he can burn the earth earth up tomorrow. If he wants a beautiful temperate climate like we've had in the last week, he could do that as well because he holds unchallenged dominion over all of creation and everything that has been created. Number two, and this is a good one. In Christ we walk by faith, not by sight of the divine blueprint. You see some mystery here, mysterion, you see some mystery. We want answers, we want for sures. We want knowledge, we want God to give us more. Uh, you know, yes is yes and I know that for sure, but we walk by faith, not by the side of the divine blueprint. And three, the me message of God is often bittersweet.

I won't even say often the message of God is always bittersweet. Uh, and the scripture, you see that. And you see this here when he eats the scroll, right? I mean you've got a lot of gravitas to walk up to an angel and ask for his little scroll and then he consumes it and he's willing to consume it even though he knows it'll make his stomach sour with the bitter.

There is sweet in the word of God and the sour. And like I said about mentioning Jim a moment ago, two things can be true at once. The word of God is sweet, but because there are consequences to human sin, there are consequences and boundaries and it can also seem bittersweet. The cross, as we know, was bitter. Let's look at the first point.

Go to verse two. He the angel, we believe it was an angel, not God, not Jesus was holding a little scroll which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, a dominant position, just an absolute dominant position. You can see that angel and these legs were pillars of fire and maybe hearkening back to the power of the spirit and the pillar of fire.

And the same fire that you see there. You have God's covenant. You could tear apart just what this angel looks like and go into the Bible for days and days to just look at what this angel means. But let's just look at this two pillars of fire standing there with one on the land and one on the sea. And the main point is that God has dominion.

Why is this important? Why is it important? Because this is a preemptive offensive move by this angel directed by God to show that he has dominion over the beast. Three chapters later, let's read a couple scriptures and these are in your notes. Revelation 13, one, the dragon, we're gonna get to the dragon in our next series. Um, series four, the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. Remember there's a dragon coming, we haven't gotten to him yet. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea, go to Revelation 13, 11, 10 verses later. And then I saw a second beast, like if one wasn't enough coming out of the earth, it had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.

They're coming out of the sea and they're coming out of the earth and it's terrifying, right? When you read it as a kid, I remember I read that I, oh, I don't wanna, oh it's so terrifying. Here comes the beast out of the sea, the beast outta the land. But if you haven't read the book and you don't know that three chapters earlier, an angel came with pillars like fire for legs and put one foot in the sea and one foot foot on the earth and took dominion and power over that, you see then that God is in charge. And let me say to you, God is in charge of your life as well.

Maybe the beast is coming out of the sea right now at you. Maybe the beast is coming out of the land, but God has been there first. He has redeemed you and he holds dominion over your entire life. Let's get back into a proper understanding no matter what's happening in the world, the turmoil of the world, if you want to just look at what's the world is happening in the world and have a report, and that's your report right now, I wanna say that you are missing the God that sends his angels to put one foot on the land and one foot on the sea. God is in charge of human history.

And if you are worried today, let me assure you that he is in charge of that. He is in charge of the holy land. He's in charge of his holy city over and over again. He's in charge of your life. God takes dominion and let's put that back up in front of us once again. Second thing is this, in Christ, we walk by faith, not by sight of the divine blueprint, verse three and four.

And he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. And when he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. Now seven, that's a big word. It's a perfect word. The word seven perfect number we use it means completion and perfection. And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write it down, but I heard a voice from him say, seal up what the seven thunders have said.

And do not write it down the word mystery in its different forms. Greek and Hebrew is used 26 times in the scripture, 26 times. It's only used six times in the Old Testament, all of in the book of Daniel. Now the book of Daniel is the book of Revelation of the Old Testament. If you were to have a book of revelation in the Old Testament, much of our scholarship of understanding the book of Revelation comes because we understand what happened in the book of Daniel.

It's a prophetic word of prophecy. So we see that that mystery word is used six different times only in the book of Daniel. And it's also the other 20 times. Many times in the um, in the Book of Revelation you see a tying together, but you see that mystery is important to God. Why? Because we are saved by faith, not by what we can know and what we can understand.

And so there are mysteries in the New Testament. I said the word mysterion is most often used in context with a divine truth that was once hidden but has now been revealed through Christ. Now the mysteries that the Bible talks about are not like who done it? Uh, like oh, we're trying to find out, watch one of those murder mysteries or find out a, you know, sleuth it out like the Pink Panther back in the seventies as a kid I used to watch that. We're not trying to figure out that kind of an answer.

These are divine mysteries that can only be known through divine revelation, through God of uh, things of divinity. What is interesting is if you go to verse seven, you see that it's being said, the angel is saying, uh, or the voice comes and says to John, do not write it down because basically it's a mystery, right? But a few verses later, it isn't a contradiction, but we see that some more things will be fulfilled.

Remember there's a pause and we have the seventh trumpet coming. When the seventh trumpet is blown, the angel who's here speaks and says that those mysteries, which he just said don't speak about, that's just one of the mysteries. The seven, what the seventh thunders said will be revealed. Go to verse in this um, passage. Go to verse seven.

This is the angel speaking. But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, that's like two chapters away. The mystery of God will be accomplished. It'll be accomplished just as he announced to his servants. And the prophets mystery is used a bunch in the Bible and there's a lot of mysteries in the word of God. Let me give you some how mystery is used.

It's used as the gospel of salvation for all that all people can be saved. That's shown in Ephesians three, three through six in Romans 16. Now lemme just give you a little hint so you don't have to write down so fast. There's a a website called Bible Gateway, okay? Go to bible gateway.com. All there's a search bar at the very top when you're going, don't do it on your phone right now. You go put in mystery, hit search.

Every verse on the right hand column will show everywhere in the Bible where it is. You can go find these verses later on your own so you can, that's a great Bible study tool. But the gospel salvation is in Ephesians three and Romans 16. That's a mystery. The incarnation that God became man is a mystery that God became human being. It is mentioned as a mystery in one Timothy three 16, the church as the body of Christ is a mystery. How do we become Christ's body?

We are actually the body of Jesus. Have you ever thought about that? That the church, that is a mystery. How does that actually happen? How are we compared with Christ as a body of Christ? The resurrection and the transformation of believers is in Corinthians 15, the resurrection and the trans. How we are transformed. It speaks about that being one of the mysteries.

And the final one is the end times and the return of Christ. Those are five of the main ways that mystery is used in the scripture. The gospel of salvation, the incarnation, the church and the body of Christ, the resurrection and transformation of believers and the end times. So I tell you that there will be a time where there has been a mystery to be revealed. Uh, David Guzzi is a great Bible teacher.

If you haven't listened to David Guzzy, go to YouTube and just listen to David Guzzi. I stole about four of his points today, so I gotta copyright him on this. He's phenomenal. He believes that when the mystery is revealed with the blowing of the seventh trumpet, which we're gonna get to at the end of this in about two more weeks, mysteries like, why does God allow suffering in the world will be revealed?

Mysteries about how do bad things happen to good people, mysteries about why everyone is not saved. Those are the questions and those will be revealed. My daughter said to me yesterday, she said, well, well then we'll know everything. I said, no, because we're finite so you'll understand it. But we, we'll continue to learn for eternity. So when you get to heaven, and I heard someone say it this way once, if God shows you blue and he wants you to know what blue means because everything with God has a meaning, right? So blue has a meaning to God.

You could sit there for a million years and just trip on blue and God's, let me show you a little bit more about that. You'll be like, what is ah blue? You know, well, wait, wait, wait, do we get to orange? You know, let me show you love. Let me show you forgiveness. It's just gonna be like just tripping on God's love and knowledge.

You're just whoa, forever and over growing in the knowledge of him because we will continue to run though immortal at this point, into his infancy and begin to know more and more forever. And that's why heaven will never be boring. That's the second one. We walk by faith, not by sight of the divine blueprint. Lemme just tell you, you don't need to know everything. Being able to live in mystery, in the mysteries of God, the mysteries of your life, why things haven't worked out.

I have a friend who called me last week and he loved that assignment word for two or three weeks ago. That was a word that really resonated. God gave me a word for the church about that God has put some of you like angels on assignment. He wants us to look for our assignments. And many of you spoke to me about that. And he called me and he said, God gave me an assignment and I knew it was from God. And he said, but when I went to do it, what God told me, I know, he told me was gonna happen, didn't happen.

And I need you to call me because I don't want any more assignments from God if this is how it's gonna go. Fair enough. I called, we spoke, we had a conversation and he said, I'll tell you one thing that's different though. Um, back in the day, not long ago when I would have a challenge in my faith, I'd go to liquor store and he said, this is the first time in a long time.

I said, I'm not gonna go to liquor store, I'm gonna sit in the mystery. And I thought, yes, that is maturity. Why has my friend not been healed of cancer when I have all the faith in the world that he healed be healed of cancer? All the faith in the world that he'll get up out of his bed, but things don't look good, these will be revealed and God will make it known.

The mature believer can live in the mystery. Let's go to the third point. If you're struggling with mystery, let God be in charge. The message of God is bittersweet. Verse 10 and 11, I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and I ate it. It tasted sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turns sour. Then I was told, you must prophesy again about many people's nations languages and kings.

Notice that after he ate what was bitter and sweet and bitter or sweet and sour, after he did that, he was called to go prophesy with both elements within the message. It had bitter and it had sweet. I wanna say the first thing we see here is the word of God is not meant to be read, it's meant to be consumed. Word of God is not meant to be read.

It's meant to go into your entire being. It's meant to be consumed, to swallow it, to let it become all about you in your, in your fibers of your mind. As we memorize the word of God, as we learn God's word, God has made it that our minds can be bent towards scripture as they become part of our neuro system goes into our mind and it begins to change your mind.

The word of God will bend your mind. And when your mind is bent, your soul will be bent by making that truth available to your life constantly as it is in there in your memory. For people that have suffering, deep levels of dementia, still able to quote the scripture and sing the songs of the Bible that they know. I've seen that over and over again. I haven't heard that on an NPR story.

They don't do a lot of Bible stuff on NPR, but they were preaching or talking. They weren't preaching, but they were talking about that same story. That there was this woman, she be began to sing the old gospel songs. That's all she could remember. And so we see that. So the first thing is the word of god's not meant to be read.

It's something you need to consume. If you're not consuming the word of God. I encourage you, my friend Paul called me, you'll hear from him in a couple weeks, we're gonna do a a, a testimony called me a few weeks ago. He said, for the first time ever, I wanna get my own Bible. He said, I wanna go buy a Bible and I'm excited about what should I get? And I said, just spend a go. Spend some money on one, get a good one.

Like if you're gonna get yourself like your new set of golf clubs, you'd get the right one. So I said, let's do it with the Bible. He got back to me, he said, man, I, I've never been so in love with the word. It was like a month later, I'm loving the word of God. I love reading it. This has changed my life. I've never done it like this before.

Consume the word of God. I would say the true messengers of God proclaim both the bitter and the sweet. It's really easy to grow a church when you only preach the sweet. It's really easy to grow a church when you only preach the bitter. That's true. There are some people that only want the bitter. There are some people that only want the sweet to find a church that can preach both is difficult. And to preach the word of God is difficult.

But see, we don't want both. We don't want both. We want one or the other because it's difficult to balance in our life. And that's the mystery. The mystery is how is God's goodness so good the cross? Is it beautiful or is it ugly for the third time? Like Pastor Jim says, two things can be true at once. It's beautiful, but it's horrific and ugly. You sees too often we want love without limits, redemption without repentance. God's grace, without his grievance against our sin and Christ without a cross.

Say that again. We want love without limits. Redemption without repentance. Grace, without God's grievance for our sin and Christ without a cross. We've gotta preach both people all the time. There's certain issues in our culture. I don't want to preach that. That's bitter. That's bitter. I can't preach that. And this is sweet.

It's so sweet. It feels so good. I just want to give that sweet because God is so sweet and good and loving. And we won't preach 'em both. We have got to preach them both. I believe that we are in apostasy. Lemme just give you Ezekiel three 18. Ezekiel is there. And God says to Ezekiel, when I say to a wicked person, you will surely die.

And you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from all their evil ways in order to save their life. In order to save their life. Lemme say, read that again. In order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin. But I will hold you accountable for their blood. Wait Adam, that's Old Testament. That's Old Testament bro.

Don't be giving me all that OT stuff. This is a New Testament. This is grace. Well, if that's true, then why in Acts 20 does Paul say in Acts 2026 or 27, therefore I declare you today that I'm innocent of the blood of any of you for I have not hesitated to proclaim claim to you. The whole will and counsel of God. Look, there's there. There is a, there is an art to doing it.

And you can, you can give somebody so much light, you blind them. I'm not telling you to blind people with the light, but we need to preach the entirety of the gospel. And I know the Lord told me, tell your congregation this because that I would say being held accountable for someone else's blood when I know the truth, that's a bitter. That's that bitter. Right. Ugh.

But so they might be saved. That's the sweet, right? That they might be saved and say that's what we want to do as a church. Amen.